CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK WILDE AT HEART GALLERIES-CHELSEA Lowell Liebermann is an epicure among American composers, savoring glittery chords, gossamer lines, and velvety textures that more self-consciously intellectual colleagues might be scared to put on paper. He's well equipped to take on Oscar Wilde, and his 1996 opera, "The Picture of Dorian Gray," luxuriates in a suitably eclectic aesthetic language, ranging from the late-Romantic regret of the elder Richard Strauss ART & LANGUAGE. STEPHANIE BROOKS. HELEN MIRRA. IAN WILSON Two word-obsessed post-post-minimalists-Brooks and Mirra-are juxtaposed with Wilson and the Art & Language collective, veterans of Conceptual- ist -era poetics. All are interested in language as a rig- orous code of repetition and difference, but the women dare to provide a stronger dose of sensuality. Brooks, for example, presents "My Idealized Library of Fem- inism" -a suite of ten polished, blank, book-size pan- els of cherrywood-while Mirra's pricked-paper drawings quote the index of some evocative but un- identified volume ("Blunders, 18; irreparable, so easy to commit, 114"). Wilson contributes two sets of art- ist's books, each page of which reads "Perfect," while Art & Language marks the history of such verbal- visual practice with two grand chart drawings from the early seventies. Through June 23. (Peter Blum, 526 W. 29th St. 212-244-6055.) PETER FISCHL! AND DAVID WEISS The Swiss collaborative team, which has shown work in many mediums, used photography to doc- ument eighty-two ephemeral constructions they made between 1984 and 1987. Using everyday objects ranging in size from a potato to a wine bottle to a bicycle, they made temporary sculptures-Dada- esque assemblages that involved wildly disparate el- ements in unlikely balance. The results are elegant, funky, engaging, and charmingly modest. Work on this series led Fischli and Weiss to create the bril- liant sequence of interconnected, Rube Goldbergian contraptions that they @med in 1987 for "The Way Things Go." Another film, "Making Things Go," débuting here, records the slapstick trial and error that went into that comic masterpiece. Through June 30. (Marks, 523 W. 24th St. 212-243-0200.) DIDIER MASSARD The Paris-based photographer is an illusionist, con- juring (i.e., constructing in his studio) imaginary landscapes that are at once meticulously realistic and magical, even otherworldly. A magnificent rhinoc- eros stalks through a fogbound clearing and a jewel- like jellyfish floats through the rays of light that fil- ter into an underwater coral garden; people would spoil these fantasy lands. Other sites-a forbidding marsh, a misty glacier, a grotto framing a black-pearl moon-are more purely fanciful, like sets for op- eras or classic Disney cartoons. Although Massard casts a strange and lovely spell, once he's pulled off an illusion the delight can dissipate fast. Through June 23. (Saul, 535 W. 22nd St. 212-627-2410.) "IN DEFENSE OF ARDOR" Another chapter in the backlash against irony-or, as the press release states, irony narrowly defined as "a kind of ideological malaise, a willful displac- ing of affect in return for absolute neutrality and arrogant negativity." The ardent artists here include neo-neo-expressionist painters like Jonathan Meese, Jutta Koether, and Dana Frankfort; Nathalie Djur- berg, whose Claymation video features a crying, alienated protagonist; and Johanna Billing, whose video of youth gathered for no ostensible reason is titled "Project for a Revolution." In another context, these artists might appear as capital ironists. Here, caught in the web of the curators Becky Smith and J oão Ribas's poetic theorizing (this is the third in a series of exhibitions titled "The Mallarmé Proposi- tions"), they're definitely defying malaise and arro- gant negativity. Through June 30. (Bellwether, 134 Tenth Ave., at 18th St. 212-929-5959.) Short List r\ f) 4r to the minimalist pizzazz of the young Philip Glass. Center City Opera Theatre, in Philadelphia, recently gave the première of his chamber-orchestra version of "Dorian Gray," which allows the voices to be heard clearly amid the instrumental bacchanalia. Hardworking singers, led by the tenor Jorge Garza, brought to life Wilde's tale of eternal youth and smoldering sin; Andrew Kurtz conducted an often dulcet-toned orchestra. Liebermann's piece is a superior example of the book-club operas that have thrived on American stages in recent years. With one or two cuts in the slightly overlong first act, it might even become a durable classic. ASSUME VIVID ASTRO FOCUS: Connelly, 625 W. 27th St. 212-337-9563. Through June 30. THOMAS FLECHTNER: Boesky, 509 W. 24th St. 212-680-9889. Through Aug. 17. WAYNE GONZALES: Cooper, 521 W. 21st St. 212-255-1105. Through June 29. ANDREAS GURSKY: Marks, 522 W. 22nd St.; 523 W. 24th St. 212-243-0200. Through June 30. RALPH LEMON: The Kitchen, 512 W. 19th St. 212-255-5793. Through June 23. MR.: Lehmann Maupin, 540 W. 26th St. 212-255-2923. Through June 23. ROBIN RHODE: Rubenstein, 527 W. 23rd St.; 526 W. 24th -Alex Ross St.; 534 W. 24th St. 212-627-8000. Through June 23. HAIM STEINBACH: Sonnabend, 536 W. 22nd St. 212-627-1018. Through June 30. FRANK STELLA: Kasmin, 293 Tenth Ave., at 27th St. 212-563-4474. Through July 6. ZOE STRAUSS: Silverstein, 535 W. 24th St. 212-627-3930. Through June 23. JULI- ANNE SW ARTZ: Bienvenu, 529 W. 20th St. 212- 206-7990. Through July 6. RICHARD TUTTLE: Sper- one Westwater, 415 W. 13th St. 212-999-7337. Through June 30. "CONCRETE WORKS": Mitch- ell-Innes & Nash, 534 W. 26th St. 212-744-7400. Through July 27. GALLERIES-BROOKLYN "PROJECT: RENDITION" While not quite extraordinary, this show, by JC2- a.k.a. Joy Episalla, Joy Garnett, Carrie Moyer, and Carrie Yamaoka-makes nice use of a famous 1630 sermon by John Winthrop, the governor of the Mas- sachusetts Bay Colon): It is from this document that Presidential speechwriters lifted the phrase "a city upon a hill." JC2 prints an excerpt of the text on a giveaway poster, in ink that shows up only in black light: "The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken . . . we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world." An interactive sculp- ture is more heavy-handed-a pentagonal box in mir- rored glass, with a soundtrack of snippets of jingo- istic sci-fi. Through June 25. (Momenta, 359 Bedford Ave. 718-218-8058.) DANCE NEW YORK CITY BALLET This is a week of farewells. On Friday, at the State Theatre, the forty-eight-year-old Kyra Nichols will retire from the company, where she has spent the past thirty-three years (nine of them under the tu- telage of George Balanchine), with a program com- prising three of her most luminous roles, in "Sere- nade," "Robert Schumann's 'Davidsbündlertänze,'" and "Vienna Waltzes" (all by Balanchine). June 20 is the last opportunity to see Christopher Wheel- don's eerily gripping new ballet, "The Nightingale and the Rose." In what is perhaps an attempt to raise our spirits, the company will dose the week, and the spring season, with two performances of Bal- anchine's shimmering "Jewels." + June 20 at 7:30: "Jeu de Cartes," "The Nightingale and the Rose," and "Robert Schumann's 'Davidsbündlertänze.'" + June 21 and June 23 at 8 and June 24 at 3: "Jew- els." + June 22 at 8 ("Kyra Nichols Farewell"): "Ser- enade," "Robert Schumann's 'Davidsbündlertänze,' " and "Der Rosenkavalier," from "Vienna Waltzes." + June 23 at 2: "Raymonda Variations," "Dybbuk Variations," and "Stravinsky Violin Concerto." (Lin- coln Center. 212-870-5570.) AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE In the second major sendoff of the week (see N.Y.C.B., above), the beautiful and poignant Ales- sandra Ferri-endowed with amazingly arched feet, a marvellously pliant frame, and a fiery sense of drama-will take her final bow with A.B.T. on Sat- urday evening, after a performance of Kenneth MacMillan's "Romeo and Juliet." Dancing along- side her will be the guest artist Roberto Bolle, a thirty-two-year-old star at La Scala Ballet, in Milan. + June 19 and June 21-22 at 8 and June 20 and June 23 at 2 and 8: "Romeo and Juliet." + June 25-26 at 8: "Swan Lake." (Metropolitan Opera House. 212-362-6000. Through July 7.) "INVENTION: MERCE CUNNINGHAM & COLLABORA TORS" One of Cunningham's more radical practices has been to keep his choreography apart from his col- laborators' sets and music until the first performance, when serendipitous correspondences begin to emerge. This landmark exhibit at the New York Public Li- 0 brary for the Performing Arts, opening June 19, is '<i: more planned than that, but the effect is similar: six ð decades' worth of backdrops and costumes by Rob- ert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and